Posted on 04/09/2005 10:49:09 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
SAN FRANCISCO – One year after failing to win control of the Sierra Club in a bitterly contested election, advocates for stricter immigration limits are back, arguing that the venerable conservation group can best protect the environment by reducing U.S. population growth.
The club's 750,000 members are voting this month on whether the organization should push for tighter restrictions on immigration. Five seats are open on the 15-member board of directors, which sets club policy and commands the $100 million annual budget.
Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization, club activists seeking to limit immigration, are backing five candidates and pushing a "yes" vote on a measure calling for restricting immigration. They say that Americans are the world's biggest consumers, and that when immigrants come to this country they significantly increase their consumption.
"The issue of escalating population growth in the United States is the single most important environmental issue in the nation," said board member Paul Watson, who heads the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. "We've got to address this problem. We can't continue to have our heads in the sand."
But opponents, including many current and former leaders of the 113-year-old club, argue that wading into the politics of immigration will alienate allies such as labor unions and civil rights groups and won't slow population growth worldwide.
"Just to focus on building more walls, and focus on immigration into the United States, does nothing to address the global population problem," said Sierra Club President Larry Fahn, who is urging members to reject the ballot measure. "It would be damaging to the club and its alliances around the country."
Voting, now under way, will end at noon April 25, when the election results will be announced.
Last year, a record number of members voted in the group's most contentious election to date after club leaders warned that outside anti-immigration and animal-rights groups were trying to seize control of the influential organization.
More than 171,000 members voted – more than twice as many as in previous elections – and the five board candidates backed by the club's leadership won in a landslide. They defeated some big-name opponents, including former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm and Frank Morris, former director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
The San Francisco-based Sierra Club, founded by conservationist John Muir in 1892, has debated its position on immigration for years. It voted in 1998 to remain neutral.
Still, the club's immigration control advocates have continued to push for a harder line and forced the question onto the ballot again this year. They say the U.S. population, now about 300 million, is expected to more than double this century if nothing is done to slow its growth.
"Our population is already too large to be sustainable within our resource base," said Dick Schneider, a club member in Oakland who wrote the ballot argument in favor of lower immigration limits. "Unless the U.S. population is stabilized and eventually reduced, the Sierra Club will fail in its mission."
Schneider and his allies say overpopulation has led to a variety of environmental problems, including the increased exploitation of resources, the erosion of wilderness and the extinction of species.
The immigration control advocates also insist they have nothing against immigrants. In fact, they argue that limiting immigration will improve wages and working conditions for immigrant workers by reducing competition for jobs.
"Nobody wants to close the door," said Watson, who is a Canadian citizen but resides in the United States. "We just want to lower the numbers."
Opponents say the Sierra Club already recognizes overpopulation as a major environmental threat. They say the threat must be addressed globally, through family planning education, birth control access, fair trade and empowerment of women, especially in poor countries.
"Population growth has to be addressed by addressing its root causes," said Robert Cox, a former Sierra Club president who wrote the 1998 ballot argument in favor of remaining neutral on immigration.
"Immigration control has done nothing to reduce family size or population pressures," he said. "It just scapegoats people who end up bearing the brunt of our trade policies and foreign policy."
Schneider said he's not optimistic the ballot measure will pass "given the array of money and forces against it," but he believes that the Sierra Club will have to confront the immigration question eventually.
"The sooner we come to grips with it the better," Schneider said. "It's key to protecting the environment."
""The sooner we come to grips with it the better," Schneider said. "It's key to protecting the environment."
Forget about the increasing population growth, I've seen the parks after our uninvited guest workers leave them with diapers strewn about, garbage all over the place, motor oil dumped. I don't want to sound like I'm picking on Mexicans, but I've driven through their neighborhoods on Monday mornings to see garbage all over the place, and it's not the asians or the Armenians leaving their diapers on the ground and peeing in public. These people treat LA just like the crappy villages they left behind.
Interesting. The Sierra Club is in a bind here. They're a front group for the Democraps but there's no denying that illegal aliens dumping their used diapers, drug needles, and bodily waste is an environmental hazard. For all the talk about this, I'm sure the Sierra Club will put up a wall of silence when the DemonRats holding their leash tell them to make it go away.
Yep, I've seen this in other places. These people live like goats.
Still, it's a pleasure to see two of the Democratic Party's most influential pressure groups at each other's throats for a change.
Bravo!!! I don't know anybody who has stated this better in the past 25 years. Keep up the good work!!
Excellent, the circle is joining, anti-business, anti-life envirowhackos, joining with country club conservatives.
Let's send them some of the pictures the Minutemen have been taking of the Arizona border. It'll show them evidence of the trash the illegals are dumping and the environmental damage they are doing to the area.
Yeah like those so called CONSERVtives, who are against drilling in 1% of ANWR.
So, on balance, what percentage of CONSERVtives do you believe are against drilling in ANWR? This seems to be more of partisan obstructionism with the dems than a conservation issue with conservatives.
Have no idea, but the so called CONSERVatives, you are promoting on this thread, sierra club, would be 100% against drilling in ANWR, IMO.
You are mistaken to believe I am promoting the Sierra Club. In fact, if you read my first post, it is quite obvious that I am saying they are missing the bigger picture with illegal immigration, so holster your anger, cowboy.
In October, the LA Times described who the Sierra Club got millions of dollars from:
http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/002126.html
In 2001, Gelbaum branched out with two back-to-back anonymous gifts to the Sierra Club Foundation that dwarfed all previous individual contributions to the club. The $101.5 million in donations...
The candidates contended that the club's leadership opposed their election partly because of pressure brought by the secret donor...
David Gelbaum insisted that he played no role in the election. He dismissed allegations that he is calling the shots at the club in any other way.
"None of that is true," he said. "I'm not some Svengali. I'm not that engaged."
But he said Pope long had known where he stood on the contentious issue. "I did tell Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me..."
Massive legal immigration must end.
We are out of room and resources.
And we have enough environmental regulations.
Adding more people will stress the environment further, and result in more regulations--more restrictions on the use and enjoyment of America's natural places.
"And yet these are the same people who are fighting so hard to keep a wall from being built on the border down in San Diego to keep illegals out, saying it will cause too much ecological harm to fairy shrimp or some garbage if it is built."
It has been reported that the human traffic trampling though this wetland is doing far more damage than than a fence would, but these people have failed to acknowledge this, thus proving that their charter is not about the environment as it is more for political power.
Our fragile National Monuments, National Wildlife Refuges, National Parks, and National Forests along the U.S. southern border are being annihilated - not by natural forces or by unwitting tourists, but instead by an overwhelming number of illegal aliens (up to 300,000 in Organ Pipe National Monument alone in recent years) who rampage through and destroy these supposedly protected areas. Our beautiful and pristine areas, set aside by Congress to preserve for future generations, are quickly being turned into National Sacrifice Areas:
The rugged Coronado National Forest has become strewn with literally thousands of trails and footpaths worn into the land by the flow of illegal aliens. Often, illegal aliens leave their campfires burning, starting forest fires. Over 60,000 acres of the Coronado have burned in recent years, much of it the result of fires started by illegal aliens, according to the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus.
A July, 2002 report by Interior Department, Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Environmental Protection Agency says, "As a result of the vast amount of smuggling of humans and controlled substances in Southeast Arizona, the extremely valuable, and sometimes irreplaceable, natural and cultural resources ... are in jeopardy." This is not just a few footprints in the sand. Some of the damage is unbelievably extensive and will take up to 200 years to repair.
In addition to direct damage to the fragile desert ecosystems, tremendous piles of litter and drug-carrying backpacks are discarded, along with thousands of abandoned vehicles.
http://www.desertinvasion.us/index.html
That makes sense. Assuming the global population grows at the same rate whether illegal aliens are inside the US or not, less total energy and natural resources will be consumed if more people stay out of the US.
A "Heads We Win, Tails They Lose" bump.
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